Product Description

Jack Gladney, head of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill, is afraid of death, as is his wife Babette and his colleague Murray who runs a seminar on car crashes. The author exposes our common obsession with mortality, and Jack and Babette's biggest fear - who will die first?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2509 in Books
• Published on: 1986-10-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 326 pages

Review
This seminal slice of American life, first published in 1984, is as topical and acute as ever in its ironic, knowing analysis of the preoccupations of modern America. It charts, in heartbreaking detail, the nuances of modern marriage, specifically that of Jack and Babette, lecturers at a typical college. Their family structure is complex, with teenage children from previous marriages, yet the fear of death that each of them holds drives Babette to take covert action. Meanwhile, a series of toxic waste leaks - both simulation exercises and the real thing - place Jack in a situation where he fears he may have to confront his fear of death sooner than he would like. The running joke that Jack is also taking secret German lessons (because the subject that he teaches - Hitler studies - presupposes a knowledge of the language) provides rich fodder for his conversations with his colleague Murray, who teaches seminars on celebrity deaths. The interplay between Jack and Murray is one of the highlights of the novel, with some of the most insightful dialogue you are likely to read, and Jack's relationships with the adolescents of his extended family, and their eternal thirst for knowledge, are particularly sharply observed, as is the background of endless shopping malls, psychopharmaceuticals, academic sniping, mindless television and tasteless fast food. Barely a word or thought is superfluous in this thoroughly welcome republication of a 1980s classic that has brilliantly stood the test of time, from one of America's most accomplished writers. (Kirkus UK)

DeLillo, whose recent taste for fashionable conspiracy and political/philosophical statement has detracted from his eloquent gifts, is back in top form here: sections of this new novel harken back to his best, early, most generous work - and also extend themselves further into regions of dark domestic poetry and fearful pity. The family of Jack Gladney, an insecure academic chairing the Department of Hitler Studies at a small college, is made up of the progeny of both Jack's and wife Babette's previous marriages. In this step-family, then, Jack is happy: "Heat, noise, lights, looks, words, gestures, personalities, appliances. A colloquial density that makes family life the one medium of sense knowledge in which astonishment of heart is routinely contained." True, Jack's professional life is kitschy, in a college that also has a whole department of "American environments" - staffed by fast-talking exiles from New York City, focusing on Elvis, car crashes, UFOs, and generic foods. But his private life with Babette is blissful - clouded only by their mutual fear of it ending: who'll be the first to die, to interrupt the happiness? Then, however, about halfway through the book, there's a catastrophe, an "airborne toxic event," a chemical spill that necessitates evacuation of the college town; during the exodus Jack is momentarily exposed to the noxious air when he gets out to re-fuel the family car, an exposure which will later doom him to a premature death. And though the chemical cloud disperses, the now-strengthened fear of death - the title's "white noise" - continues to paralyze Jack and Babette both: she goes so far as to submit to sexual blackmail, to guinea-pig herself in experiments for an anti-death-anxiety drug called Dylar; Jack takes jealous revenge upon the mad scientist pushing the pills. . . while yearning desperately for the pills at the same time. True, the novel goes wrong here - opting for flashy paranoia and sci-fi, relinquishing the naturalness of the family scenes, the evocation of loneliness before death, the apocalyptic clarities of the evacuation after the spill. In the main, though, DeLillo's most human instincts prevail in this book, resulting in a wealth of lyrical, touching, and terrifying scenes: the family eating fried chicken together in their car; a visit by Babette's broken-down father; and, most indelibly, the descriptions of the "black billowing cloud, the airborne toxic event, lighted by the clear beams of seven army helicopters. They were tracking its windborne movement, keeping it in view" - to the awe of those below in cars and on foot. DeLillo turns a TV-movie disaster scenario into a new Book of Revelations in these pages: a very disturbing, very impressive achievement. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

One star is too much praise!
When one picks up a book from the "Cult Fiction" section in any bookshop, it's normally there for a reason. I expected from reading the blurb to White Noise that I would be in for, and I quote, "brilliant and often very funny dialogue" and an exposition of "our common obsession with mortality". So, a darkly funny book about death, something that immediately appealed to me. How mislead I was.

What I was, in fact, in for was a slow and torturous read. The characters of Jack and Babette were, for the most part, very boring, and the only instance in the story where they seemed to develop partially-formed identities of their own seemed like a last-ditch attempt, as if no real thought had been made as to who they were until the last minute. I had completely forgotten who Murray was supposed to be by the end of the book, his presence was so meaningless. As for the festival of children featured, they confused and frustrated me beyond belief.
The plot was the most disappointing part of the whole experience. I suppose I should have realised as soon as I read the less than specific blurb that it was going to be bad. One can't write a novel about all the instances of two people discussing Hitler and celebrity deaths. I can see what DeLillo was trying to do; write a series of short stories that introduced different chapters in the Gladney family's lives, but he missed the boat completely. Instead, what you are faced with is 3 chapters with no beginning, middle or end, just a series of analogies and non-events that try to convey a sense of philosophical meaning. As previous reviewers have no doubt mentioned, this book tries to make you think, but it fails by trying too hard. I have read children's books that have made me contemplate the human condition more than this book.

Perhaps the most frustrating part about the whole thing is that you are given a lot of information that you really don't need, like on the first page, where you are given a list of items packed in station wagons. A LIST, I tell you! I was told in Year 5 that lists equal bad writing. DeLillo is almost projectile vomiting pieces of worthless information at the reader, like what colour a character's jumper is, while at the same time is neglecting elaborating on his characters personalities or even the town they live in. A really good story could have come from these people, but it is because of such dire writing that no such wonder appears.

I refuse to understand why this is so highly praised, or why it is a "must-read". DeLillo is the worst author I have ever had the misfortune of encountering, and it has made me strongly question the meaning of the words "Cult Fiction".

Postmodern Classic? what it means to be alive!
I've come to this book from reading the ideas studied in Post-modernism and the novel came recommended along the lines of Paul Auster and Thomas Pynchon.

My experiences with both of these other authors have been negative, for very different reasons. (Auster's inability to write without his vomit inducing smugness and Pynchon purely and simply because of the density of the prose...yes alright...I promise to return to Pynchon in the future...). So that being said, thankfully, I enjoyed this book immensely.

Delillo's phrasing is skilled and astute; he's a writer who constructs prose with economy and flair, with well observed situations and a sharp critique for common everyman foibles.

The flow of the book is always engaging and the characters are constantly funny, quirky and human. The narrative is straight but with the constant use of stream of consciousness thoughts and dialogue it feels like it should be more challenging to read. It isn't.

The plot on retrospect is a touch convoluted but whilst reading it doesn't detract from wanting to know what happens next.

Ideas play a big part of the book (the simulated taking prevalence over the real, the inability to get reliable information in a communication age, the meaning of death...) but it is far from academic, dry or preachy.

This is a beautiful and tender story, well told, imaginative and literary in the truest sense i.e. that it leaves you thinking about what it means to be alive.

Amazingly overated
This was my introduction to Delillo and it was a huge disapointment, leaving me puzzled as to what people find so brilliant about him. The characters are awful cardboard contructs who nobody could ever care about for a moment. The plot is non-existent. I know, I know, it is a brilliant post modern satire on consumerist society and disaster as spectacle and plot is not the point. But you know what, it is not brilliant abd books do actually need plots or at least stories. Pretty much every theme in it had been dealt with by earlier writers so it felt curiously old fashioned for a mid eighties book. The philosophical musings are half baked and hardly insightful.

Oh and the humour, well, it just isnt funny. Didnt make me laugh anyway. I feel a bit bad slamming an author like this. He did his best no doubt and good luck to him but the critical acclaim is just astonishing.

The final thing that people talk about is his writing - the brilliant phrases and glittering sentences. Well, I will have to say the quality of the writing was what made me grind on for a hundred pages in the hope that something might happen or that the characters might somehow become more engaging and less one dimensional. It was pretty good. Not the prose of genius as it is sometimes described but he turns a neat phrase here and there. And to be ultra fair the idea of Hitler Studies was probably pretty clever in 1984 or so.

But really, who wants to read hundreds of pages of this sort of damp attack on consumerism. The praise heaped on it seems to typify what has gone wrong with literary fiction and the criticism of literature.

Worth a read if you are wanting to strike literary poses, if you want a story worth reading don't bother.